For Astros, cutting back on strikeouts is a winter priority

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Facing tremendous pitching, the Red Sox set a major-league record for strikeouts in a single postseason and won the World Series. The Astros last year struck out 62 more times than Boston — a major-league record 1,535 — and that’s without playing a single game in October.

Trimming the number of whiffs is a priority this winter. Strikeouts aren’t considered as terrible for hitters as they once were, but nothing is good in this much excess.

“We don’t want to strike out anywhere near as much as we did last year,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said. “We need to be cognizant (when making player additions). Often times power hitters come with a lot of strikeouts and that was a big problem for us as a team last year.”

Overall, Houston had the highest swinging-strike percentage anywhere. Strikeouts are tolerable when they’re accompanied by enough production in other areas: power, or an ability to get on base or a propensity to see a lot of pitches. But few Astros met that standard.

First baseman Chris Carter was the big-league poster boy because of the 212 times he fanned last season, third-most all-time. But those hard swings led to 29 home runs, and made Carter a positive contributor. Jason Castro was the team’s best player, and he carried 130 strikeouts.

Other Astros who struck out at a high rate, meanwhile, essentially performed as fringe hitters: Rick Ankiel, Jimmy Paredes, Marc Krauss, Jonathan Villar, Brett Wallace. But two of those players are already gone, and only Villar may play prominently in 2013. Carlos Pena’s long gone too.

Center fielder Brandon Barnes strikes out a lot, but so too does top prospect George Springer, who could replace Barnes.

“It’s the type of strikeouts,” Luhnow said. “We don’t want to have guys chasing balls out of the zone or swinging and missing in the zone. We did plenty of that, both of those, last year. I think that’s a problem. You can hide a guy or two in the lineup that strikes out a lot, but it’s hard to hide four or five. We seemed to be racking ‘em up in bunches last year. We’ll be cognizant of that with any offensive pieces that we look at. How it fits into the rest of lineup.”

For a team that finished with 11 more losses than any other, there was actually an encouraging sign of plate discipline. The Astros saw an average of 3.82 pitches per plate appearance in 2013, the 14th best mark in the majors.

But the other numbers were dim.

The Astros made contact with pitches they swung at out of the strike zone less frequently than any other team, per FanGraphs. Only one team was worse making contact inside the zone.

That’s why when rumors cropped up that Ike Davis or Mark Trumbo could be targets for the Astros, there was a hint of illogic involved. Both of those players are power hitters who strike out a ton. But a high-contact guy like James Loney, who’s a free agent, ostensibly could make more sense from that perspective for an upgrade at first base.